Parliament recommended restricting pursuits eight years ago

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Eight years ago, Parliament agreed to restrict police pursuits. But
victims are still waiting. Gerard Ryle and Debra Jopson report.

The car seemed to come out of nowhere. And even today, 10
months later, nobody knows all of what happened that night. Renee
Pron and Dean Berg were on their way home after an evening at
grandma Pron's Dural home with their only child, three-year-old
Tabatha.

It was about 10 o'clock on a dry January night as the family
drove down Windsor Road on the familiar journey home to Bowen
Mountain.

Dean sat in the front, with Renee at the wheel. Tabatha, wearing
a pink T-shirt, orange knee-length pants and her Pooh-bear sandals,
was in the back with Dean's sister, Angela. The child was tired.
She liked to sing in the car, but not tonight. Thankfully, perhaps,
she had fallen asleep. Seconds later, their world was ripped
apart.

From the opposite direction, Peter James's car came flying
through the night. The police were reported to have said they had
clocked him at 150kmh before they started chasing him.

The 53-year-old excavation company owner was an unlikely target
for a high-speed police pursuit, forever warning his children
against excessive speed. But there is no doubt he was going too
fast on January 15.

As James's black 2002 Holden Calais and its pursuer headed
towards the Bergs' red 1991 Ford Falcon, Dean, 26, recalls the
distant flashing lights of the police car. Renee, 27, remembers the
concrete roadwork barriers as she passed an intersection at
McGraths Hill, moments before the impact. She had no time to react;
James was on the wrong side of the road.

The impact of the two cars killed Tabatha Berg and Peter James;
Renee's legs were shattered so badly that steel pins now bind them.
But there is the even greater pain of Tabatha's loss. "She was the
centre of our world, basically, and it was just a sudden thing. It
has just completely ruined our lives. We had this whole future and
it has just completely gone now," Renee says.

"She was our first and only child and first grandchild for every
parent ... We just loved having her, too, you know. It was just
such an amazing experience for us."

Both sets of families are asking questions. They want to know
what role, if any, the police pursuit played in the tragedy.
James's widow, Lin, insists what little she knows about her
husband's actions that night was totally out of character for the
father of seven. It rankles that the media, which usually relies on
the police for information, at first mistakenly claimed he was
driving a stolen car.

Dean Berg says: "The fact [was] that police chased this person
at 150kmh into a 60kmh zone with major roadworks, which was only
just up from their police station, so they obviously knew the
condition of the road.

"You can't take the blame away from the person [James] who had
control of those decisions and decided to drive that way. But it is
questionable that he would be driving at such excessive speeds if
he wasn't being panicked from the police."

The State Coroner will also seek answers at an inquest early
next year.

Ten years ago, the NSW Parliament tried to find out how to allow
police to chase suspects in a way that reduced the risk to others.
Police argued then - and still do - that they must be able to
pursue criminals, who could simply flee if they knew they would not
be chased.

At that time, public outrage over pursuits had risen after the
deaths of two innocent drivers in less than four weeks. There had
been more than 1200 police pursuits a year in NSW.

Staysafe, a parliamentary committee into road safety, spent six
months during 1994 finding answers. It released 34 recommendations
designed to reduce the death and injury toll. These included
installing cameras and voice recorders in police cars, and having
the Ombudsman's office oversee all pursuits.

On May 2, 1996, Parliament voted for all 34 recommendations to
be implemented. Little has happened since.

Putting video cameras in cars has been delayed since 1997, when
a high-powered committee headed by an assistant police commissioner
began evaluating the technology. Police on the beat were baffled.
By 1999, and often in defiance of police command, many highway
patrol officers were rigging up their own systems.

The delay in installing the cameras has also frustrated
coroners. The acting Deputy State Coroner, Dr Elwyn Elms,
investigating the death of 19-year-old Peter Hanby after a pursuit
near Parkes in June 1999, said the cameras would protect the public
and police by providing a first-hand record of events.

The Deputy State Coroner, Carl Milovanovich, investigating the
death of 18-year-old Saimone Fifita in December 2000, said the
cameras should be installed "as soon as practical".

Fifita was incinerated in peak-hour traffic while being chased
in a stolen car, which overturned at St Peters. The police promised
the Coroner that, after trials beginning in June 2001, the cameras
would be put in by 2003. It never happened.

The NSW Government would begin its $8.6 million installation of
video cameras in the state's 344 highway patrol vehicles this
month, a spokeswoman for the Police Minister, John Watkins, said
yesterday. It has also provided 600 sets of spikes which can be
laid across the path of a fleeing suspect and has trained 1800
police to use them. So far, they have been used successfully in 30
incidents, she said.

However, black box recorders, which in England were reported to
have reduced deaths and injuries in police pursuits by up to 25 per
cent, were never installed.

Nor was the Ombudsman given the power to review all police
pursuits. There is little external oversight of pursuits, unless
someone complains, or someone dies. The police last year reviewed
their own safe driving policy. This year they reviewed laws
covering pursuits, leading to proposals which are "under
consideration", the minister's spokeswoman said.

Shortly before the Staysafe committee delivered its report in
December 1994, police began volunteering pursuit information to the
Ombudsman. The arrangement continued only until August 1996. By
then, public interest in the issue had died down.

"They said to us there is no lawful requirement for us to notify
you of these matters," says deputy Ombudsman Steve Kinmond. "We
considered the legal position on that and we [were] left with no
alternative but to agree."

Since then, the number of pursuits has nearly doubled, to 2459
last year. In the 10 years since Staysafe's inquiry, police chases
have been linked to the deaths of at least 54 people, the coroner's
records show.

They include passers-by such as Andrew Lojszczyk, a 25-year-old
trainee orthopedic surgeon and his girlfriend, accountant Maryann
Cameron, 24, who were killed as they went out to get a pizza.

One June night six years ago, a 14-year-old car thief fleeing
police slammed through a red light and hit Lojszczyk's Mazda on the
New England Highway near Newcastle.

"We had a son who was a gifted surgeon, who promised to me that
I would be a grandmother many times - and I've lost that," says his
mother, Irene.

Irene is keen to renew a failed push she made soon after the
crash to get the Government and the police to consider how pursuits
are conducted. "Apology at this point doesn't mean a lot to me. I'd
prefer to hear them say they will review and try and change the
policies," she says.

When her only son died, Irene and her husband, George, went to
the Premier, Bob Carr. Still nothing happened: "He expressed his
concern and sympathy, but nothing eventuated.

"If they [the police] were after someone who committed a murder
and they knew for sure, maybe you could justify a chase, but not
after a certain speed, definitely not.

"How do you compare the value of a car to the value of a
life?"

Maryann's mother, Shirley Cameron, wants police to find
alternatives to pursuits "because the minute some of these
so-called joyriders get into cars and the police put their sirens
on and chase them, what are they going to do? Are they going to
stop? No, they're not. They're going to take off. And they're in it
for the fun of it, so they're going to try to go as far as they
can, so some innocent person is going to end up getting killed
..."

Many of the families of passers-by who were injured or killed in
the course of police pursuits stressed that the suspects must bear
responsibility. But each family contacted by the Herald
asked the same question: are pursuits worth the price?

"I'm willing to do anything to help to stop [them] because I
know how I feel and I don't want anyone to feel the same," says
Laila Saroufin, who lost her youngest son, Anthony, in January
2000. "It's the worst thing in life to lose a child. It's like you
take your heart and bury it in the ground ... You are alive, but
you are dead."

Saroufin died when a pursued stolen car crashed into his uncle's
truck on the F5. His uncle, Joseph Mokdassy, is now in a
wheelchair, in care and unable to speak. An electrical engineer,
Mokdassy was the sole breadwinner for his wife, Yolla, and their
four children, then aged 18 months to 10 years.

Mary Guthrey, who lost her 18-year-old niece, Laura McGrath, in
a stolen car chase in February 2000, says: "They [the police]
shouldn't do it. Every time I hear one I think I should take some
action."

On many days the memories of Tabatha Berg pervades everything
for Renee and Dean. The painkillers Renee must take act only as
reminders.

Dean says the police have said little to them about the accident
preferring to wait until the coroner's inquest.

"From what the investigating officer has told us, it is all
fine, they followed protocol and these things just happen and there
is nothing they can do about it."

This angers the young parents.

"For us, it would be the hardest thing for this to happen and
not see any changes to come out of it. Just to see it left the same
way, and the same thing could happen to somebody else just as
easily."

But tragedies like that of the sleeping child have been repeated
over the past 10 years. Every family affected asks Renee's
question: "I constantly wonder what we all did to deserve
this?"